Jack Masters: Mapping of a wilderness

Saturday

Nov 17, 2012 at 10:52 AM

Most likely you don't know Jack Masters — but you should. I have only known him for a couple of years, but I have developed great respect for him. Most folks, at least the happy ones, have an obsession. It might be fishing or hunting, children and grandchildren or some hobby. For Jack, its maps. He is obsessed with making maps of this area when it was first settled.

Most likely you don’t know Jack Masters — but you should. I have only known him for a couple of years, but I have developed great respect for him. Most folks, at least the happy ones, have an obsession. It might be fishing or hunting, children and grandchildren or some hobby. For Jack, its maps. He is obsessed with making maps of this area when it was first settled.

He will be here at the archives from noon to 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 19,with his latest work, “The First Southwest — the Third Atlas of the Cumberland and Duck River Settlements.” Jack’s first atlas covered the settlements in and around Nashville, with the second atlas covering the area lying around Nashville. This third version covers much of Maury County, and some of the other counties lying a similar distance from Nashville.

You don’t have to stay long around the archives to see serendipity at work. I can’t tell you of the times when someone comes in the door with a question, and the answer walks in the door right behind them. We have had numerous chance meetings of long-separated family members who have showed up on the same day. It is very common to see unplanned family “reunions” here.

In spite of these meetings there was none stranger than the day that Jack Masters walked into the building. After many years of wishing and hoping we had just received the early land grant maps of Maury County done many years ago by local surveyor, John J. Harris. Those maps were a lifetime labor by Mr. Harris, and his daughter, Melinda, called and offered them to us. Tony Staggs and I went to Mr. Harris old office and carefully detached the huge map segments from the wall, labeled them, and brought them here to the archives. It was only a few days later that Jack Masters walked in, asking if we had any maps of land grants. Boy, did we ever!

The stories of those land grants contain a lot of heroes, heroines and not a few villains. Settlers were trying to farm to keep their families alive, while simultaneously fighting the Indians who came in waves against them. The war went on for fifteen years, and came close, on several occasions, to wiping out the scattered farms along the Cumberland River. It was a war of ones, twos and threes. A handful of Indians would creep upon a farmer and his family; murder, scalp and mutilate them, then take everything that was not nailed down. Occasionally small groups of settlers would band together, pursue the Indians into the forest and return the favor. Even then the pursuers were often ambushed, and one or two deaths would turn into four or five.

While these hardy folks were working and dying on their farms there were “investors” back east who were sending surveyors to the area to lay off huge tracts of land that would later be sold off for large profits. It did not take the Indians long to figure this out, and they actively hunted down and killed the surveyors, and destroyed their transits, which they called a “land stealer.”

These are the tracts that Jack Masters has charted. Using the mass of land grant books, he has laboriously pieced the frontier back together. His three atlases have brought order from chaos, and we can now see who the original settlers were and where they lived. This third atlas is largely about Maury County, and tomorrow, here at the archives, you can get a copy.

If you like history and enjoy maps, this one needs to be in your library.

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Bob Duncan is director of the Maury County archives. He may be contacted by e-mail at bduncan@maurycounty-tn.gov.